Gagging clauses which have prevented hundreds of NHS whistleblowers speaking out are to be outlawed.

Departing staff will instead be given a new legal right to raise issues that could be in the public interest, such as patient safety, death rates and poor care.

Last night Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted that creating a culture of ‘openness and transparency’ across the NHS was vital to prevent a repeat of the Mid Staffordshire scandal, in which as many as 1,200 patients died.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said that so-called ‘compromise agreements’, under which NHS staff cannot raise anything embarrassing to their employers when they leave their jobs, would be barred with immediate effect.

‘There has been a culture where people felt if you speak up about problems in the NHS you didn’t love the NHS. Actually, it’s exactly the opposite,’ the Health Secretary said.

‘We need a culture of openness and transparency if we are going to stop another Mid Staffs from happening.

'The era of gagging NHS staff from raising their real worries about patient care must come to an end.’

Senior figures in the NHS had warned that the case of whistleblower Gary Walker, who broke a gagging clause to speak to the Mail about high death rates, was the tip of the iceberg.

MPs want to question embattled NHS boss Sir David Nicholson about £14.7million of taxpayers’ money spent over three years on almost 600 ‘compromise agreements’ with departing staff.

An estimated 90 per cent of the documents contain gagging clauses which ensure potential whistleblowers are silenced, but there have been growing calls for the practice to be stopped.

The Health Secretary said: ‘We are just going to ban them. All these compromise agreements have to be approved by the Department of Health and the Treasury.

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‘We are now saying we won’t approve any with a confidentiality clause that prevents people speaking out about patient safety or patient care.

'We will make sure there is a specific clause in them saying that nothing in them can prevent people speaking out on issues such as patient care.

‘Mid Staffs happened because there was a culture of covering up problems. We need to encourage front-line NHS employees who see problems to come forward, in the first instance to tell their own institution about them but then having the ability to go beyond that if they don’t think anything is being done about their concerns.

Gagging culture: NHS boss David Nicholson, pictured speaking at the same event as the Health Secretary yesterday, may be questioned over the £14.7million of taxpayers' money spent on 'gagging' departing staff

First step: Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the ban on gagging is only part of the government's response to what happened at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust

‘That culture of openness and transparency is at the heart of what we are going to try to do to drive up standards across the NHS.

‘This can only be part of our response to Mid Staffs. If we have a culture where whistleblowing is necessary then obviously something has gone wrong.’

Mr Hunt said a new chief inspector of hospitals would be charged with ‘creating a culture of consistent striving for excellence’. ‘The chief inspector will examine lots of areas, but one third of the entire score for a hospital will be based on patient experience – the extent to which patients would recommend your hospital to friends and family, the extent to which your complaints procedure actually listens to people,’ the Health Secretary said.

‘In too many hospitals, staff think that patient care is something you do when you have done everything else.’

Previous headlines: The Mail reporting on the whistle-blowers on February 15 this year

Mr Walker claimed he was sacked as chief executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals on a trumped-up charge after raising concerns about patient safety.

The father of two said he accepted a so-called supergag as part of a settlement package of an unfair dismissal claim, reported to be at least £500,000, in 2010. He broke the terms to speak out last month about a ‘culture of fear’ in the NHS.

He claimed Sir David Nicholson ignored him when he raised concerns about patient safety in 2009.

Despite indications that support for Sir David is waning in Number Ten, Mr Hunt said he had an ‘honest disagreement’ with those calling for the head of the NHS to resign.

‘I don’t think he was personally responsible for Mid Staffs. He was part of a whole targets culture that went badly wrong so he has responsibility in the same way that all managers did,’ he said.

‘But he also led the campaign to bring down MRSA rates and bring down waiting lists.’ Ministers also fear the disruption that would be caused by Sir David’s exit in the next few weeks, with 30,000 people in the NHS due to start new jobs on April 1 as a result of the Government’s NHS reforms.

Sir David is due to appear before MPs investigating disastrous health service IT projects next week, but members of the public accounts committee also want to question him about his own expenses claims.

NHS MUST BE 'OPEN', SAYS BOSS... BUT HE REFUSES QUESTIONS

Journalists were banned from filming Sir David Nicholson’s speech and asking him questions at a conference where he spoke of promoting ‘openness and transparency’ in the NHS.

Some photographers were also told they could not take pictures at yesterday’s event where the embattled head of the NHS gave the keynote speech.

Sir David talked of developing a culture of being ‘absolutely clear about both the good things and the bad things that happen in our NHS’.

Television crews were prevented from filming his speech but afterwards he gave a short statement to them.

Sir David would not take questions and NHS press officers asked TV crews not to follow him around during the rest of the NHS conference.

He is under pressure to resign over his role in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust scandal in which up to 1,200 patients died between 2005 and 2009.

For part of that time, Sir David was chief executive of the strategic health authority that oversaw the Mid Staffordshire trust. Robert Francis QC published his report into the scandal last month.

During his speech, Sir David said: ‘He [Francis] talks about a culture, a positive culture of learning, of openness, of transparency, of getting information out and being absolutely clear about both the good things and the bad things that happened in our NHS in a pretty matter of fact and organised way.

‘That is exactly the culture that you need to develop and support innovation. That open and transparent culture… That is the culture we should develop and promote in the NHS.’

Journalists vented their frustration at the secrecy surrounding his appearance at the ExCel Centre in east London. Victoria Macdonald, Channel 4 health reporter, tweeted: ‘This is a first. told we can’t film David Nicholson speech today. Sensing the hands of Downing St in this one.’